Link Banana

Tommy Craggs — with good reason — thinks that the whole “Redeem Team” shtick is nothing but the most insidious marketing campaign the NBA has ever waged.

The Redeem Team’s greater triumph in these Games, though, has been one of marketing, branding, and message discipline. With assistance from Nike, which partnered with NBA Entertainment to make a five-part Team USA documentary called “Road to Redemption,” USA Basketball has relentlessly peddled the notion that this new bunch has embraced the virtuous and selfless habits of international ball.

Daniel Engbar makes a provocative suggestion: they’re three times whiter than the Celtics.

Last spring, economists Joseph Price and Justin Wolfers published a careful analysis (PDF) of league statistics and found evidence of racial bias among the referees. According to their research, the numbers of fouls called against white and black players varied depending on the race of the referees for that game—when there were more white officials on the floor, fewer fouls were called against white players. And since the majority of the league’s referees are white, this puts minority players at a disadvantage. (To be exact, the data showed only a relative effect—so it’s impossible to know which direction the bias went. White refs may favor white players, or they may discriminate against blacks. Or, black refs could just as well be favoring black players or discriminating against whites.)

These two things recently caught my eye.

• Kobe Bryant speaks Italian. Now you know. (via Neatorama)
• Chinlone is a traditional Burmese sport, whose ball is about halfway between a soccer ball and a hacky sack. That also approximates what it is. (via Good)

Megan Stack has an interesting story in today’s LA Times about Shabtai von Kalmanovic, a Russia oligarch who’s spending a lot of money to get underpaid WNBA players to play for a team and a league that no one seems to care about. [Insert obvious crack about the WNBA here.]

Nobody is making money off Spartak. On the contrary, it’s better described as an extravagance than a business: Kalmanovic has to pay Russian television to air the games, and they often end up being broadcast in the middle of the night. Nobody even bothers to sell tickets to the games. Too much bureaucracy, Kalmanovic says. The spectators are mostly schoolchildren, soldiers and locals looking for a free night of entertainment.

(via brijit)

Something of a sequel to Teams We Hate, John Frank Weaver imagines for McSweeney’s what Hemingway would have to say about the NCAA Tournament.

North Carolina Tar Heels

Roy Williams is soft. His hands look manicured. They have never pulled tobacco from the dirt. He has never gutted a fish fresh from the sea. Soldiers shoot soft men in the back rather than follow them into battle. Williams should look out. He should watch his back. But junior forward Tyler Hansbrough is a 2-ton bull in baby-blue shorts. When he broke his nose last year, he saw red. He charged. His horns went down and gored opposing players. I would fight with this man. I would die for him. If a bullet met him, I would cradle his head till he left this earth. After the platoon’s soldiers shoot Roy Williams in the back, they’ll follow Sergeant Hansbrough into combat. Hansbrough and UNC charge to the Elite Eight.

Slate’s compiled a fun little feature for March Madness time. A rundown of eleven teams that they hate, and for various reasons. Of Baylor, Bryan Curtis says this:

Hate is not a word I would use to describe Baylor, the red-brick university conveniently located mere yards from Interstate 35 in Waco, Texas. As any Big 12 alum will tell you, playing the Bears, who hadn’t made the NCAA Tournament in 20 years, inspires a different emotion: fear. Fear of losing to a massively inferior opponent, fear of bowing before the runt of the conference. This season, after Texas A&M dropped a five-overtime game to the Bears, the Aggies were serenaded with chants of “worse than Bay-lor!” by opposing fans. The joke was that such a fate was unimaginable.

At Slate, teacher David Ramsey gives a great summary of the city’s luke-warm relationship with it’s suprisingly stellar NBA basketball team.

While there is no question that the Saints are the “city’s team,” it’s the Hornets who are more emblematic of New Orleans. There was no sudden miracle. The team was slow to return and hasn’t been given enough attention by the nation at large. Rooting for them is marked by a spirit of unvanquished optimism (these guys could win a championship) and realist doubts (these guys could be in Oklahoma in two years). They are thriving despite it all, but the future seems grave.

The Miami Heat won a protested call in an after-the-game ruling. This is the first time such a thing has happened since 1982.

Shaquille O’Neal fouled out of that game with 51.9 seconds left, but as it turns out, he in fact only had five fouls. So the next time those two teams play, they will first finish their last game. It’ll be the shortest basketball game in history, I suppose. Hope those coaches have some good plays ready.

(via kottke)